The Shape of Mercy (5 page)

The ink faded away with the fairy prince on the cusp of discovery. I wanted to read more but I didn’t know if I could handle the stress of turning another page. Abigail spoke, and the sound of her voice startled me.

“I don’t want you merely to copy the diary, Lauren. I want Mercy’s life to be remembered in language that is understandable. I want it to be a story. There’s more to Mercy than this diary.”

“More?”

“Of course there’s more.” Abigail frowned, as if wondering how I could not know a woman is more than what she says about herself. “There’s everything I know in my head about her; what has been told about her down through the decades, what has been passed from generation to generation—all of which I will tell you, Lauren, because I have no daughter.”

At that moment, I understood Abigail had arrived at a place of decision
and the lore that surrounded her beloved cousin was with her at that meeting place. Abigail stood at a crossroads, burdened by her status as sole heir, to decide if Mercy Hayworth would slip away into anonymity when Abigail died, or if she would unseal the vault that kept Mercy’s memory alive and command us to weep for her.

She wanted what Joan of Arc finally got five hundred years too late—a crown of sainthood on a tragically bowed head.

I should have realized then that this wasn’t about Mercy alone.

A bird the color of sky flew into our barn today. It has an injured wing. He must have been hurt before the autumn snows and so could not fly south with his brothers. Papa thinks he must be roaming from barn to barn in the settlement, looking for a warm place to spend the winter. Poor thing. He’ll not find a warm place this winter, I dare say. I cannot remember a January as cold as this one. Clouds are collecting, and I fear we are in for a terrible blizzard. I can hear it in the wind. Lily senses it too. When I milked her she kept her nose in the air, sniffing like a dog.

Goody Dawes made a strange face at the Ordinary today when I told her the wind whispers of heavy snow for tonight. I don’t think she cares to listen to anything save gossip. Gossip is seldom about the weather.

I heard her tell Goody Wyndham that ’Tis a disgrace John Peter Collier isn’t in the militia with the other young men of the Village. They meant with their own sons, of course. I was of a mind to remind them that since the passing of John Collier Senior, John Peter’s mother has relied solely on him to tend to the mill. If he left, there would be none but his young
sisters to help. There’s not a one of John Peter’s sisters who could manage the grindstone.

But I minded my tongue. Not because I wanted to, but because Papa would have wanted me to.

Ah, I see the first flakes of snow as I write. A wall of whiteness descending.

I do hope the little bird stays in the barn tonight.

’Twill not be safe to be out and about.

Snow covers all. I shoveled a path to the barn, and the traces of my steps disappeared even as I stepped away. Lily was fretting to go out. She does not care for being wedged in the barn all day long She gave me little milk for wanting to be out in the sun. I told her there was no sun today. She tossed her head at me as if to say, if there is daylight, there is sun. I told her the light she senses is but the wide whiteness of last night’s blizzard. Snow has a light of its own when it is angry. A cold light. Menacing
.

The little bird sat watching me as I milked Lily. He chirped. I threw him some crusts of bread that I carried in my apron
.

I have named him Wanderer
.

John Peter likes the name
.

Mama would have liked it too
.

T
he first afternoon I spent with Mercy began with these two January days, one promising a storm that would leave its cold mark on
everything in its path and the other promising that there would be no escaping it, not even for the smallest and delicate of creatures.

When I finished transcribing Mercy’s first entries, I felt as though I had been sucked into a portal of shifting moments and then spit out. I sat back in my chair and rubbed my right shoulder. Handling the pages of Mercy’s diary kept the muscles in my neck and arms tense with worry. It had taken me an hour to transcribe the first entry into language that made sense and yet didn’t alter what Mercy had written. Then another hour for the second.

I wanted it to be perfect.

I wanted to let my mind conjure the scene as Mercy wrote. The cold whiteness of winter. The fluttering of tiny wings. Bittersweet memories of a deceased mother. The hard life of a young woman in colonial times who had already lost much. And over all these images was my knowledge that something was about to descend upon Mercy, far worse than a snowstorm. I wanted to shout across the centuries and warn her even though I knew full well, as Abigail had told me, that Mercy’s destiny was sealed.

I had read Arthur Miller’s
The Crucible
in high school. I remembered enough of the play to know that the coming days in Mercy’s snowy white world would usher in a nightmare, a truly dark moment in our nation’s history. As I rubbed an ache in my neck, I had a sudden desire to research the Salem witch trials, to read up on what I would soon see through Mercy Hayworth’s eyes. Surely in a library as overweight as Abigail’s there would be books on the Salem trials, especially since Abigail’s long-ago cousin had been a victim of them.

I looked up from my work to face Abigail, who sat behind me as I read and typed. Abigail didn’t stand over me as I plucked away at the laptop. In fact, she never seemed to let her eyes glance over the text of Mercy’s diary. When she was in the room with me, helping to fill gaps where pages were missing or not legible, or where Mercy’s ancient words
needed clarification, she always stood off to the side. She never looked over my shoulder at the faded pages.

She sensed me looking at her and raised her head. “Do you need something, Lauren?”

“I was just wondering if you had books on the Salem witch trials I could take home and read on my own time.”

She blinked at me. “What for?”

“I’d like do some research. I think it would help me understand the times Mercy was living in and what she went through.”

Abigail licked her bottom lip. “Honestly, Lauren, the diary is all you need to understand Mercy and what she went through.” She looked down for a moment, as if concentrating on choosing just the right words. “In fact, that kind of research would interfere with the work you’re doing. Many have hypothesized on how the hysteria began and why. No one is really sure. It can get a little muddy, even political.”

Abigail paused for a second, then continued. “I am asking you, Lauren, to read nothing written about the trials. Nothing. Not until you are done with the diary. When you’re done, you may borrow any book I have on the subject. And I have many. But I ask that you wait until you’re finished. And don’t meddle with those Web sites on the Internet. Not yet. Just concentrate on the diary.”

Abigail locked her eyes on mine, pleading with me. A strange sensation fell over me as I realized I was in a position of power over her. There were not to be many moments like that one.

“May we agree on that? Just until you are finished with the diary?” she asked.

It occurred to me then that the diary might be a forgery. It didn’t look like one, but her anxiety made me question it.

“Is this diary genuine?” I asked.

“I assure you it is genuine. God is my witness.”

We looked at each other for a moment.

“So may we agree on this? It is essential that we agree.” Her eyes were hard on mine.

I could sense that my job hung in the balance. She was ready to pull the diary out of my hands and send me away if I refused. It mattered that much to her.

But that’s not what bothered me most, that it mattered. I was thinking about what my father would say if I got fired from a job he thought was silly to begin with. I had no desire to find out.

“If you think it’s necessary,” I said.

“It is. Not for the diary, but for you.”

She looked back down at her book, the conversation over.

I had no idea what she meant.

I
kind of broke my promise to Abigail the moment I got back to my dorm room. “Kind of,” because I didn’t promise I wouldn’t look at any
plays
about the Salem witch trials. I promised not to read historical accounts or Web sites.

I couldn’t go back to my empty room—Clarissa would be working or studying somewhere else—with
The Crucible
sitting on my bookshelf and not look at it.

I had no trouble rationalizing it. I’d already read the play, and it wasn’t a historical account. It was based on fact, but that was all.

I’d brought quite a few books with me to Santa Barbara my freshman year. Far more than I needed, more than the average dorm room could hold. Half of the boxes of books I brought went back with my parents that same night. As my father replaced the extra books in his company car, he reminded me that if I had gotten the condo like he suggested, I could’ve brought as many books as I wanted.

He hadn’t thought much of my idea to live in a dorm. Not enough security (he still worries I will be abducted and held for ransom), too much partying (even though I am not much of a party girl and he knows it), and not enough attention paid to studies. He had yet to meet Clarissa, the woman who could do it all—stay safe, work, party, and study, all at the same time.

I’m sure he also felt that if I had at my disposal the means to live on my own, in the manner to which I am accustomed, why settle for anything less?

Historically, Duroughs don’t settle.

Clarissa was gone, and the room was quiet except for heavy bass booming from a stereo next door. I was caught up with assignments for my classes the next day, so I made a cup of green tea and eased
The Crucible
out from its thin space on my bookshelf.

I opened it and fanned through the pages, noting my high school scribbling from my junior English class. I’d highlighted snatches of dialogue, penciled in a few insights from my seventeen-year-old mind, and drawn little daisies in the margins.

The moment I held the pages still and my eyes swept the script, the details of the story came back to me. The names, the places, the remembered fear that someone can say something untrue about you and as long as there is someone else to believe it, you are whatever they say you are.

The remembered names filled my head: John Proctor. Betty Parris. Abigail Williams. Martha Corey. Tituba. Rebecca Nurse.

And I was suddenly aware that these people weren’t merely characters in a play. They had been real. Arthur Miller had fiddled with the details—like creating an affair between John Proctor the accused and Abigail Williams the afflicted, which would have been unlikely, as the real Abigail Williams was only eleven years old—but the people had actually existed. Mercy probably had known them all by name.

And they knew her.

Inside the book, just before the first scene, I found a folded piece of paper. Study notes from my American lit teacher. I read them and remembered.